Analysis of bistatic ground clutter characteristics and effects on space-time adaptive processing

In-depth study of ground clutter characteristics of airborne bistatic radar is significant to clutter suppression and moving target detection (MTD) through space-time adaptive processing (STAP). Based on the geometry configuration that transmitter and receiver align at the same velocity, the paper presents the equation of ellipse on ground and analytic resolution of clutter scatterer location when the two-way distance between receiver and transmitter is constant, derives the clutter ridge expression and gives theoretic explanations to the nonlinear and nonstationary properties of bistatic clutter. Changes of clutter ridge are given under mathematical analysis; meanwhile, STAP performance is briefly analyzed with parameters of platforms at different bounds. Simulations verify the correctness of conclusions given in the paper.